Book Preview: TALIEN by J J KEYES

It was all there in hindsight, Terry thought to herself, decades before anyone suspected the truth. The lowering of inhibitions. A decline in the public discourse. Hatred of all kinds on the rise and callousness the quality most likely to get you ahead. People had blamed many things – the internet being a prime culprit – but she, being a biologist, had always suspected a more fundamental cause. She remembered the day that paper came out more clearly than any other, and she was far from alone. It was no ordinary academic publication. Despite looking and sounding like any of the thousands of other scientific publications that came out that day, what it described was on an entirely different plane of significance. Through a meta-analysis of recent and not so recent epidemics of violent behavior, an infectious agent had been identified. One that was highly transmittable and capable of drastically affecting the brain. An epidemic of bad temper, which would only get worse ending up in homicidal mania. The first question on everyone's mind was why had it only appeared now, but that was speculatively answered too. This new virus was not new at all, but very very old, locked up for eons in a glacial prison. But human progress had thrown the prison door wide open, and released it back into the populace."

COMING SOON from JJ KEYES: A microbiologist knows the extreme measures being taken to prevent the spread of the TALIEN pathogen are necessary, but she’s convinced crucial details about its nature are being held back. She’s right.